By Sarah E. Needleman

Skype, the Microsoft-owned service that popularized making calls over the internet, is hanging up for good.

In May, Microsoft will shutter Skype, which it bought in 2011 for $8.5 billion in what at the time was the biggest acquisition in the tech giant's history. It is encouraging Skype users to migrate to its free Teams app, it said Friday.

The demise of Skype isn't likely to have a big impact, even though in its heyday it was so widely known that its name became a verb, as in "Skype me." Once a novel technology with millions of users around the globe, Skype has long lost its luster as competing options including Teams, as well as Zoom, Google Meet and others gained ground.

The service was once dominant in the early days of making video calls over the internet and a pioneer in letting people make long-distance calls without phone charges. During a time when calling overseas could be an expensive endeavor, Skype simplified the use of internet calling for the masses.

Television shows such as "Good Morning America" helped amplify the service after Oprah Winfrey began using Skype in 2009 for her daily afternoon talk show.

In a statement on its website, Microsoft said it was retiring Skype "to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs." The company said it plans to focus on Teams, which it launched in 2017 as a competitor to Slack.

"With Teams, users have access to many of the same core features they use in Skype," Microsoft said.

Other once red-hot technologies have also been put out to pasture. Verizon Communications pulled the plug on AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM as it was known, in 2017.

Skype was launched in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, two men who had created a file-sharing technology called Kazaa that became widely associated with music piracy. Initially popular with tech-savvy types, Skype gained mainstream status by offering free or cheap phone calls, which were especially appealing to international callers.

In 2005, eBay purchased Skype for $2.6 billion in cash and stock as a way for the platform's buyers and sellers to communicate about potential transactions. But the investment didn't pan out, and four years later eBay sold a 70% stake in Skype to a group of technology investors including Silver Lake Partners, venture-capital firms Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at Sarah.Needleman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 28, 2025 11:52 ET (16:52 GMT)

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